Since there is a way to set different background colors for galaxies, I can't really see why this should not be implemented in a core game, since this has nothing to do with how the laser behaves gameplay wise. It would be nice to have a way to change the laser color either in the options screen, having default (red for all) or different laser colors could be set, also for people who are color blind this would be a very good asset to have.

This workaround might not be the ideal place to put the extra code, but it works.

For those who cannot compile or do not wish to do so I have put online two Oolite versions (1.81) with different laser colors.

dertien wrote:Since there is a way to set different background colors for galaxies, I can't really see why this should not be implemented in a core game

It is there already - sort of - as a hidden compile-time setting. If you compile with the OBJCFLAGS="-DDEBUG_LASER_TYPES" option, then pulse lasers will always be red, beam lasers will be yellow, and military lasers will be purple - look at the setWeaponDataFromType function in ShipEntity.m

I put it in so I could see at a glance what weapons the new populator was equipping ships with while writing that bit of 1.79. It's not advertised because, as I implemented it there, it overrides custom laser colours for particular ships (including making the thargon drone laser red), and that's not the right way round. If we ever figure out a sensible way to make lasers OXP-definable, then laser colour will be part of that, of course.